TheSaffaGeekhttps://thesaffageek.co.uk
My ramblings about all things technicalTue, 12 Sep 2017 10:02:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngTheSaffaGeekhttps://thesaffageek.co.uk
VMworld Day 2 Recaphttps://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/31/vmworld-day-2-recap/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/31/vmworld-day-2-recap/#commentsThu, 31 Aug 2017 16:20:39 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2541Continue reading →]]>VMworld day 2 is always a good one for me personally as it’s the day you get the tech really spoken about and shown that has been announced at the show. If you missed my blog postings around some of the big announcements from day 1 then have a look below:

My day started with the keynote and again i watched it from the VMVillage in the bloggers area which I always enjoy as you can watch the keynote over the big screens but also sit with fellow vExpert bloggers. If you missed the keynote from either of the days then you can re-watch them here. One of the big announcements from the keynote was Pivotal Container Service, I was fortunate enough to be on a early access program where they went over the solution. It looks to be a really great solution and certainly has made me think I need to learn Kubernetes as I can see some amazing use cases for my customers.

After the keynote I went and watched a bit of a vBrownbag session. The vBrownbag of which I am one of the team have been doing TechTalks all week and record the sessions as well as stream it live. I will certainly be watching these after the conference as there has been some amazing content and now that the sessions are in the content catalog we have been getting solid crowds all week with some being three people deep standing and watching due to all the seats being gone.

Next I attended VMware Cloud on AWS: An Architectural and Operational Deep Dive [LHC3174BU]-the session was really interesting although i was slightly disappointed that the session was more a walk through of how to build your SDDC rather than anything around architecture design which i found disappointing seeing as this was meant to be a deep dive.Also he stated he was engineer so there’s no demo it’s all screenshots. I took some notes from the session

Covered what AWSonVMC offers.

What organisations are and how these map across all VMware Cloud Services.

Covered the real requirement of ensuring you choose the correct CIDR block as this cannot be changed

vCenter permissions and the lock down required to ensure there were essentially a VMware owned Admin and a customer owned admin.

Showed what the architecture is and what it uses from AWS to allow VMC

Hybrid linked mode explained

Covered at a high level what provision management, remediation/troubleshooting, release coordination, auto-scaler, configuration management, telemetry and alerting service do

Broke down the networking concepts – recommended watching/attending Ray Budavari’s session to learn much much more.

Walked through the flow of a failure of a host- covered all the players if what is required for VMware to fix the issues in an automated fashion.

Covered how there is an SRE team to ensure the SaaS service works as it should (copy steps from picture)

All these sessions make me feel you need to really learn AWS to a certain level so you understand what VPC’s are etc as a fair amount of people in the VMC sessions I’ve been to seem to struggle to understand the AWS side of the service.

Next I attended AWS Native Services Integration with VMware Cloud on AWS: Technical Deep Dive [LHC3376BUS]. – this sessions was really good and the live demo and technical depth was what i was hoping for from the previous session, Again I wrote down a bunch of notes from the session below and would highly recommend watching this session after the show

Nice to hear from the AWS side and what their side of the partnership is.

Recommended reporting services like cloudwatch and cloudtrail, VMware are using these as well for part of their monitoring for you

Gave a use case and how to deliver the services for the fake company ACME distribution

Did a demo of building and running all the components required by ACME utilising VMC and AWS services.

After this I participated in a design studio UX session where we went through vRealize Lifecycle manager and gave feedback on what I liked and didn’t like and what i expected. I really enjoyed this as it was just me and the engineer and seeing as I’ve done vRA,vRO etc I was able to give some solid feedback from someone who knows the products and how to install them outside the usage of lifecycle manager. The engineer was very grateful which i always nice to be able to help.

Gregg

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/31/vmworld-day-2-recap/feed/1Gregg Robertsonimageimageimage1image4image3image5image6image1VMworld Day 1 recaphttps://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/29/vmworld-day-1-recap/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/29/vmworld-day-1-recap/#commentsTue, 29 Aug 2017 15:38:57 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2523Continue reading →]]>VMworld kicked off formally today and there were whole bunch of announcements and some awesome sessions and demo’s I was able to attend and blog about but firstly I would like to recap Saturday and Sunday’s activities so if you just want to hear about today then skip the paragraphs below and go straight to the Monday/Today heading.

Saturday:

I purposely flew in on Friday fro the UK so that i could attend the VCDX workshop and then the VCDX Town hall afterwards. The VCDX workshop and town hall were hosted at the cosmopolitan hotel and the workshop started off early at 7:30 am with some breakfast/desert seeing as it was coffee and donuts. If you don;t know what the VCDX workshop is it is a workshop for those thinking of going for the VCDX soon and is aimed to give those aiming for it valuable information and advice around the whole process, what to do and not to do in your preparations and during the defence and also to clear up some possible misconceptions and ideally show that obtaining the VCDX is achievable with hard work and dedication. I’ve blogged about this achievability as well as my personal opinion of doing it for the “right” reasons here https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/02/17/why-do-you-want-the-vcdx-accreditation/ . It was really great to see that a very large amount of the people attending the workshop felt it was something they wanted to attempt and felt it was more of a realistic target after the workshop.

After this was the VCDX town hall which is for current VCDX to speak with the VCDX certification team, have a chance to hear from Pat Gelsigner the CEO of VMware and three of the VMware CTO’s before some food and drinks. The town hall was really good and there were some very tough questions asked of the certification team around the direction of the program, how we could get the certification known more widely and aid those looking to obtain it. Chris Colotti wrote a really pointed but accurate posting around a fair few of the topics brought up by the existing VCDX as despite what many might think current VCDX do want more people to join the ranks. We then had the honour of Pat Gelsigner speaking to us and answering some of out questions. It was greatly appreciated that Pat would take time out of his very busy schedule to spend time with us and as always you could see his passion for technology shining through. Next was the CTO panel with Chris Wolf, Guido Appenzeller and Ray O’Farrell. The panel was brilliant and again the three CTO’s were extremely interested to hear for the VCDX crowd and be open and honest with their future plans. Lastly was the drinks and food where we got to socialise which was really nice to chat and joke with fellow VCDX and learn what they are up to and doing.

Sunday:

Sunday is customarily when Partner exchange happened and this year was no different. Even though I work for a partner in Dell EMC I decided to instead attend and support the VMunderground and vBrownbag opening acts. The opening acts are a community event where a number of panels are run discussing various topics by the community for the community. I was very honoured to have been asked to be part of the second of the three panels of the day around How Failing Made Me Better. The panel was very enjoyable to be on and the advice given from all of the people on the panel seemed to be well taken by the crowd. As always the opening acts allowed me to also chat with others from the community some who i have known for years and others i have only met recently. It certainly helped that it was hosted at the beerhaus.

After opening acts I wandered off to the solutions exchange to talk to some vendors as well as grab some food and drinks that were on offer. The solutions exchange was buzzing as you would expect and I managed to get over to the Datrium booth and collect my vExpert gift of an arbuboy. I then made my way back to the new york new york hotel for the VMunderground party which was happening at the beerhaus where I got to chat to loads of the community and meet up with some old friends. The VMUnderground party is always one of my favourites due to it always being in a location where you can chat to people without it being too dark or too loud (yes i realise i sound like an old man). After VMUnderground i made my way back to my hotel due to my need to be on a work conference call this morning.

Monday/Today

The day started off with me ensuring all my scheduled blogs had posted as the NDA for a number of the announcements was 5am this morning. I then made my way to the convention centre and decided to watch the keynote from the VMVillage bloggers tables as I had a session straight after the keynote and I wanted to make sure I made it in adequate time. There were a number of announcements in the keynote but the ones that I feel were the best coincided with the ones i blogged about which were:

After the keynote I attended a VMware Design Studio UX design session around VMware Cloud on AWS. The feedback around the UX seemed to be really helpful to the team and one portion I found really great was the number of woman that were part of the various team from VMware which is brilliant and certainly inspiring for my daughters futures if they decide to pursue technology as a career.

Next I attended a session on VMware Cloud on AWS: Storage Deep Dive which was highly informative and gave some great overviews of not just VMC’s usage of vSAN in the current offering but also some possible future plans around Disaster Recovery, usage of various storage providers technologies, options for backup via partners like Dell EMC and growth abilities of the solution both outwards and upwards. When the recordings of the sessions come out I highly recommend watching this one. I really like the way VMC is heading and I think it will be a brilliant offering and product.

After this I attended an invite only demo of VMware Cloud on AWS. The demo was highly informative and again I was left feeling really excited and enthused by the direction the offering is taking and the possibilities of it. When the partnership was first announced i was very unsure of how it would work and fit but I can certainly see the use cases and potential and now with VMware Cloud Services having been announced it means that you will be able to mange not just VMC but also Google Cloud Platform, Azure and your traditional vSphere environment in VMware Cloud Foundation.

The announcements have been really good and with today’s now released GA of Pivotal Container Service there are very exciting things coming from VMworld from VMware and their eco-system of partners.

Gregg

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/29/vmworld-day-1-recap/feed/1Gregg RobertsonMedia previewDIValENUIAEa6vRDIV5nklV4AAaelsimageVMware Cloud on AWS (VMC)https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-cloud-on-aws-vmc/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-cloud-on-aws-vmc/#commentsMon, 28 Aug 2017 12:56:53 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2516Continue reading →]]>The most exciting announcement from VMworld US in my opinion has to be VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) brings VMware’s enterprise class Software-Defined Data Center software to the AWS Cloud Infrastructure, and enables customers to run production applications across vSphere-based private, public and hybrid cloud environments. Delivered, sold and supported by VMware as an on-demand service, customers can immediately capture the benefits of cloud, without going through the painful and costly migration process so often associated with hybrid cloud models. With AWS’s breadth of cloud services (e.g. storage, databases, analytics, etc.) readily accessible to applications running within VMC, customers get the best of both worlds, an environment perfectly suited for running existing VMware based applications, as well as an environment flexible enough to grow and support new cloud-native based applications. Furthermore, as more SDDC components are adopted, the value derived by customers becomes exponential. VMC itself becomes a catalyst for the adoption of NSX, VSAN, SRM, and the vRealize Suite.

I have already blogged about some of the announcements due around NSX and VMC integration and VMware Cloud Services and their ability to provide a way of homogenising the cloud and providing a mechanism for you to consume all the cloud providers and one of these being VMC.

Importance of VMware Cloud on AWS

Jointly engineered solution delivers the best of VMware and AWS for customers

VMware

Leading compute,storage and network virtualisation capabilities

Support for broad range of workloads

De-facto standard for the enterprise DC

AWS

Flexible consumption economics

Broadest set of cloud services

Global scale and reach

The Solution: VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware SSDC stack running on AWS

Compute (vSphere) , Storage (VSAN) and networking (NSX)

Direct access to vCenter, including full API/CLI support

Delivered as-a-service (VMware lifecycle fully managed)

Consistent operational model enables Hybrid Cloud

Full support for existing and new applications

Existing management tooling layers on top

Hybrid and Cloud-only deployment options

Leverage cloud economics, aligning capacity and demand

Single bill for VMware software +AWS infrastructure

Possible discounts for those with large existing VMware licence counts

Consume elastically scalable SDDC clusters

On-demand or subscription

Leverage global AWS footprint

I personally am planning to attend quite a substantial amount of the VMware Cloud on AWS sessions and Hands On Labs and will be blogging about the portions of this so instead of having amassive blog posting here I will be doing multiple, the sessions i am attending at VMworld US are:

I’m really looking forward to learning more about the technologies and as promised i will be blogging about it fairly substantially over the coming week and months.

Gregg

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-cloud-on-aws-vmc/feed/2Gregg RobertsonimageVMware Cloud Serviceshttps://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-cloud-services/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-cloud-services/#commentsMon, 28 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2512Continue reading →]]>Customers aren’t just running their workloads in their vSphere datacenters but are also now running more and more workloads natively in the public cloud providers and this can be a challenge for businesses who might not have the current skillset or mechanisms to monitor and manage these public workloads. VMware have now announced a way of homogenising the cloud and providing a mechanism for you to consume all the cloud providers and manage across these various providers where you can manage, provision and migrate workloads easily between you on premises environment to the public cloud providers.

VMware did a survey recently and the amount of their customers who are using or evaluating a public cloud provider has now almost reached 100 percent with the feedback being 97% and an increase of 11% since 2016.

The amount of workloads these surveyed customers have running in these public clouds however are still very small although most see it where being on multiple public cloud providers is the ideal end state but this brings two major problems:

Operational Complexity

Application and management tool sprawl

Inefficient cost management across multiple clouds

Compliance gaps due to different architectures

Increased Risk Exposure

Inconsistent security architectures and policies

Lack of visibility into and across multiple clouds

Lack of expertise on specific platforms

For VMware Cloud Services there are mainly five different services that are being announced at todays VMworld and they are:

Scale across large NSX deployments with powerful visualisations for topology and health

Avoid configuration issues with NSX deployments based on health checklists

Quickly pinpoint issues for resolution with the help of intuitive UI and search

Wavefront

Metrics-driven monitoring and real-time analytics

Real time metrics monitoring at scale

“First pane of glass” visibility

Shared Model of application/system for both developers and ops

If you are interested in any of the solutions above then I would recommend getting to the VMware booth at VMworld US if attendign the conference or speak to your VMware sales executive if you aren’t attending to get a demo setup

Gregg

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-cloud-services/feed/2Gregg RobertsonimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageVMware AppDefense Announced at #VMworld UShttps://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-appdefense-announced-at-vmworld-us/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-appdefense-announced-at-vmworld-us/#commentsMon, 28 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2489Continue reading →]]>At todays VMworld US there are a number of announcements coming out but one of the big ones in my opinion is the announcement of VMware AppDefense.

AppDefense provides an number of features, notably:

Application Control: Comprehensive view/grouping of VMs in the datacenter, their intended state and allowed behaviour

Runtime anomaly detection and response: Monitor the real time state of the OS and user applications – alert and control process, network, and kernel events

Built-In Process Analysis

Evaluate the in-memory state of a process before/after anomalies are recognized

Does not rely on signatures or hashes at all

Provides overall risk score and individual traits within the process

Orchestrating Remediation

Blocking Behaviour or Responding on Alarms Through Virtual Infrastructure

Each rule can be associated with a recommended remediation workflow

Alerts integrate with standard SIEM tools and other notification methods

Enforcement can be automated or manual

Leverages the mutability of the virtual infrastructure (ESX layer and NSX security policy)

AppDefense Architecture

I’m really looking forward to learning more about AppDefense and seeing how it can fit my customers needs.

Gregg

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/vmware-appdefense-announced-at-vmworld-us/feed/3Gregg Robertsonimageimageimageimageimageimage#NSX Announcements at #VMworld UShttps://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/nsx-announcements-at-vmworld-us/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/nsx-announcements-at-vmworld-us/#commentsMon, 28 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2475Continue reading →]]>At todays VMworld US there are a number of NSX announcements as NSX grows it’s capabilities and features and raises the bar for SDN. Some of of the announcements at todays VMworld US conference in Las Vegas will be around a new version of NSX-T called NSX-T 2.0, VMware Cloud on AWS which provides a service that delivers a seamless extension for vSphere customers into AWS and NSX Secure Networking and the the ability for network virtualisation and security for native AWS workloads.

Firstly if you don’t know what NSX-T is then I would recommend you read the overview of it here or register for session NET1510BU . For version 2.0 there are a number of announcements, the high level such as:

Cloud-Native App Frameworks

VMs and Containers

CNI Plugin Integration for Kubernetes (K8s) /Pivotal Cloud Foundry

NSX-T PaaS /CaaS Integration

NSX integration with Kubernetes

NSX Container Plugin (NCP) for integration with PaaS with NSX Manager

Native Container Networking:

IP address per container / POD

Container Network integration with DC network via routing and BGP

Micro-segmentation – inter project and intra project isolation

Network and Security Automation – created as part of app deployment

Multi-tenant network topologies

Multiple Containers (PODs for K8s) in a VM (Container Host)

Support for vSphere and KVM

For VMware cloud on AWS there is an extensive amount of announcements and features about the service but for NSX in particular it is about centralised management, comprehensive visibility and enterprise-class security

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/28/nsx-announcements-at-vmworld-us/feed/2Gregg Robertson#VCDX Design Scenario “Tips”https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/21/vcdx-design-scenario-tips/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/08/21/vcdx-design-scenario-tips/#commentsMon, 21 Aug 2017 15:25:41 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2491Continue reading →]]>Yesterday I ran some face to face mocks at Dell EMC’s offices in Brentford UK and during part of those at the end we discussed the design scenario and what i recommend people practice. I have partly mentioned some of it already in a posting i did after the last face to face mocks here. Additional to that I was showing those people that were going to defend this coming week the plan I had around the things I wanted to ensure I asked and also what I felt I needed to keep in mind during the design scenario. Now i have to make it clear I am not a panellist nor have i seen nor know the rubric the scenario is scored on but what worked for me at least are the following:

Question any information that doesn’t make sense!!!!

Compute

1. NUMA aware applications/OS’s?

2. If not how wide is the VM that is not NUMA aware?

3. Amount of growth?

4. Total vCPUs? Divide that by 5

5. Peak GHz for CPU?

6. Peak RAM for Memory?

7. PCIE connected hardware or USB dongles?

8. Rack or Blade? If blade are they half or full and logical diagram spreading across chassis. FDM mention

9. What kinds of applications are on these servers?

10. Scale up or scale out? N+ value

11. Right size VM’s after conversion

12. Add N+ value

Storage

1. FC,FCoE,iSCSI,NFS,VSAN,vFRC

2. Existing Tiers of Storage?

3. Amount of Free space? Is this dedicated to the project? How long is the support for this?

4. PEAK IOPS

5. Average IO size

6. Read/write ratios

7. SP speeds? Active passive,active active, ALUA?

8. Standard access switch and core setup?

9. Speed of existing FC switches if applicable?

10. Existing HBA’s? speeds of these HBA’s?

11. Software or hardware initiators?

12. CHAP?

13. IOPS, Amount of required storage?

14. Amount of growth?

Network

1. Traditional or CLOS?

2. North/south or East/West traffic?

3. vSS,vDS on N1KV?

4. Hybrid or vDS only?

5. 1GbE or 10GbE?

6. Converged Network Adapter or 10GbE?

7. Peak network throughput required?

8. Speeds of Network Switches

9. MTU for Jumbo frames 9000

VIM

1. HA and DRS? (limit 32 hosts and 3000 VM’s)

2. Dedicated management cluster?

3. Virtual vCenter or VCSA?

4. Linked Mode?

5. vCenter heartbeat

6. VUM and UMDS?

7. BC/DR?

8. vCenter design to separate vCenter from DB

I also did a second prep list that is very much alike to the one above but some slight addtional parts and for the cenceptual were the questions i had made a sentence out of to remember to ask them as i felt they gave me a good start and it was what i asked myself during each practice of the design scenario so when i did it in the defence it just felt like another practice and so calmed my nerves

Conceptual

Pick out the main objective of the project (design a cluster for the migrated workloads)

Write down all other requirements ,assumptions ,risks and constraints

Availability Requirements? <- if over 99.9 then warn of additional costs

N+ requirements

If existing hardware then how old? Is it dedicated to the project? What speeds and free space does it have? Processor family? NIC speeds? Room for growth? Anything missing that is required (HBA cards or 10GB NICS)

Consolidation and containment seem to always come up so ask about the steps for migrating the servers to vm’s and minimizing the risk of server sprawl….

Licencing?

Budget?

BC/DR? <- How soon is the requirement for the failover site and is the site even built? Distances and latency if already built

Compute

Total number of CPU’s <- Question/highlight if really high or low

Are applications/OS’s NUMA aware? What is the largest non numa aware vm?

Calculate number of required hosts

Very quick mention that could work it out with Peak CPU and Peak RAM also but DON’T DO THIS CALC

Add N+ to the total number and make sure the cluster doesn’t go over 32 or 3k vm’s (This was applicable to my vSphere 5.0 design where the limit was 32)

This morning I sat the AWS: SAA exam and I’m pleased to say I passed it .I used a plethora of resources to prepare for the exam as I have to admit that I underestimated the exam a month ago and thought I would just need a general knowledge of the features and was getting full marks on the acloud.guru practice exams but failed it by ~ 3% percent. I’m not going to list all the resources I used in my preparation as I have already listed them on my blog under my AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Study Resources page. All of the resources listed were really really good and I would highly recommend not just doing the CBT training but also do the labs and spend time using the free tier to go thorough all the features and learn what they can and can’t do. The exam is made up of sixty questions and the blueprint lists the split of the different domains as per the below table:

As you can see from the breakdown the exam is largely about designing a highly available, cost-efficient, fault tolerant scalable system. The questions in the exam varied from relatively straight forward ones where you just had to know what a solution or service provided to more complex ones where a scenario was portrayed in the question and you had to define which 2-3 answers together enabled them to achieve their requirements. Based on my score I am taking it that the ones that required multiple answers didn’t give partial scores if you got one wrong which is akin to a lot of other IT exams so you certainly have to focus on your answers as I found even with eliminating answers I knew were wrong I was still left with a very close alternative.

For the study resources I would recommend watching the vBrownbag series as well as the CBT’s and doing lab work as there were certainly a few things mentioned in there that were directly helpful in the exam. It’s also really great in my opinion to hear about bits from others in the community using the technology.

Good luck if you are preparing for the exam, I’m tempted to keep the momentum going and now do the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam.

VMworld US is just around the corner (58 days to be exact) and I have been graciously allocated a bloggers pass for the conference and given backing from my company Dell EMC to attend. This will be my sixth time attending and my third time attending the US one. VMworld has something for everyone from those just learning about virtualisation to those who have been part of the industry for a number of years and are looking to those in depth sessions and discussions with the evangelists and guru’s of VMware plethora of offerings and solutions. If you haven’t yet booked your place then let me list some of the reasons I think you should attend as they are the reasons I try to attend every year:

On the Sunday of VMworld is Partner Exchange and TAM day where VMware partners can attend exclusive sessions talking about everything from future roadmaps for all of VMware product lines but also new solutions VMware are looking to release. The sessions are always extremely interesting and from my experience are the best chance to speak to the “rockstars” who evangelise and breath the various solutions. If you aren’t a partner or are looking for something community driven then the vBrownbag crew along with the VMUnderground crew are again running opening acts and then the VMUnderground party in the Evening (unfortunately the party tickets are now sold out). I will be attending opening acts and have actually submitted a panel idea that I hope will be accepted.

My next reason is about the community again but this time the ability to network with like minded individuals at the bloggers tables, fellow vExperts, fellow VCDX at the VCDX townhall on the Saturday before VMworld and all those I hope to meet over lunch and at the vBrownbag TechTalks who are working in collaboration with the VMTN team to run the infamous TechTalks. If you have never heard of the TechTalks then a brief overview is below:

Tech Talks originated at VMworld 2012 where they provided an opportunity for community members, whose presentation submissions were not accepted into the main catalogue, to present the core of a topic. #TechTalks are a ten minute presentation by a community member for the benefit of the community. Since almost everyone working in technology has solved problems and learned something almost everyone could present a #TechTalk. The format can be a slide deck or simply talking, they are usually about how to solve a problem or get the most out of a product. The TechTalk is captured on video and published on the vBrownBag YouTube channel.

If the conference Internet connection allows, the talk is also live streamed from the show.

#TechTalks are for community members to reach other community members, any topic that will help other people is good. The one thing that TechTalks are not is an opportunity to present the corporate slide deck about a great product you would like us to buy. #TechTalks are about up skilling and education, the only marketing should be from the TechTalk sponsors who help make the whole thing happen.

Next are the breakout sessions, group discussions and expert panels. The content catalog is now live and it is packed with amazing sessions by some of the biggest names in the industry and those up and coming in the industry. I’m personally really looking forward to all of the VMware Cloud on AWS sessions as it bridges my existing knowledge and interest in VMware with my exponentially growing interest in AWS. The sessions are also recorded so if you can’t make it to a sessions due to a conflict then by registering for VMworld you get access to all the recorded sessions after the conference for you to watch in your own time.

My next reason are the VMware Hands-On Labs which cover all VMware technologies and allow you to play with the latest releases and offerings not just from VMware but also VMware partners. Alike to the sessions the hands on labs are available after the conference but I would recommend going to a few that really interest you (again I’ve allocated some walk trough’s of the VMConAWS solution) and then you can do the remaining ones after the conference. If however you really want to hit the labs hard then I know they normally give a free pass to next years VMworld to the top few people who have completed the most labs.

The solution exchange is my next reason as this is the perfect opportunity to speak to those vendors who are offering the latest solution that might save your business and team loads of money and or time and this is the perfect opportunity to speak to that vendor who might be offering the solution that will fix the issues your company is experiencing and take that knowledge back to your company and impress your management with how you’ve found a great solution and to prove that your going to VMworld was worth it and that they should send you again next year. I would be remise if I didn’t encourage you to go speak to Dell EMC and hear about their amazing offerings all the way through the stack as well as pre-packaged and validated solutions for SMB’s all the way to large enterprises.

If you are looking to obtain that next VMware certification or want to speak to the certification team about the performance of your latest VCAP-Deploy exam then there are loads of VMware Certification opportunities. You can also book reduce cost exams at VMworld which I have personally never decided to do but loads of the community swear by it and due to the reduced cost it means if you unfortunately don’t make it then it isn’t that much of a dent to your pocket and lets you scope out the exam to better prepare for next time.

Last is the parties and due to the conference being in Vegas you can imagine the amount of them there are and the amount of meet ups after the parties that happen. There are parties for everyone so if you are looking for a chilled drinks evening then there are loads of opportunities for that and if you want to party all night (save some sleep to be able to attend the conference) then there are plenty of those as well. If you haven;t got a ticket to VMUnderground on Sunday then the Welcome Reception kicks off the conference experience with food, drinks, and networking in the Solutions Exchange. There are normally loads of announcements about the parties closer to the time so keep an eye out on social media as the parties fill up fast and remember the strip is big so unless you plan to uber it then getting to three parties in a night might not be possible. The VMworld party finishes off the conference on Wednesday night, the venue hasn’t been announced as far as I’ve seen but he bands have been and teenage Gregg is super excited about it as Blink 182 and Bleachers will be performing. Last years aprty at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was really fun and fall out boy were awesome in my opinion

]]>https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/06/30/why-you-should-attend-vmworld-us/feed/0Gregg RobertsonvbrownbagVCDX Preparation Advicehttps://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/05/15/vcdx-preparation-advice/
https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/05/15/vcdx-preparation-advice/#commentsMon, 15 May 2017 13:18:10 +0000http://thesaffageek.co.uk/?p=2445Continue reading →]]>Yesterday I ran face to face VCDX Mock sessions for three people defending their VCDX at the Dell EMC offices in Brentford. During the NDA permitting discussions a number of questions came up around the outlines of VCDX designs,advice for the design scenario, things to read/watch from others who attended who are looking to submit soon and I thought I would put out a quick posting around the advice given to hopefully aid people also looking to submit soon.

What does a VCDX design look like?

I get this question often and I know a large number of other VCDX do as well. People might not have seen a “VCDX Level” design before and so are unsure what they need to produce. It is highly unlikely a VCDX will send you their submission as with the invested time as well as the high likelihood of their customers name and information being in the submission. But one portion that is possible to share is the table of contents so people can possibly understand the flow (in my personal opinion) a good design should have. I have pasted screen shots below of my table of contents from my actual VCDX-DCV submission and there is also the blog posting Derek Seaman posted a while ago around this exact topic. Every person and design is different but outlines like Derek and I’s are relatively the outlines most DCV designs follow that have a good flow from conceptual to logical to physical and cover all the pillars.

How do I prepare for the design scenario as I’ve spent 98% of my time preparing for the design defence portion?

I’ve seen this ALOT and depending on your experience this can be where a lot of people fail their defences (I base this on having done design scenario mocks with people but obviously have no actual proof in the real defences). I made this mistake in my first VCDX attempt and even though I had done ones at customer numerous times before, due to the time constraints a relatively unusual way you don;t know anything about a customer and design before doing a design workshop this can be a new skill to learn but one I now use for most customer engagements I have. The way I learnt and prepared for this for my second attempt was:

Have a “script” you plan to follow to ask the right questions early on to gleam the information you need and how to manage you time to cover all the pillars in the time allocated for the design scenario. The best method IMO is one blogged about by Rene van den Bedem. Rene created this when he was preparing for his second VCDX attempt and i was preparing for my first. The questions and whiteboard layout are a great idea and allows you to collect and record information whilst allowing the panellists to see your thinking and your very important whiteboarding skills.

Stemming off of Rene’s method above Larus Hjartarson who had Rene as his mentor took the method one step further and blogged about it here. I used Larus’ method in my second defence preparations and recommended it highly yesterday as it allows you to really show your skills and get your diagrams logically drawn up on the whiteboard by the end.

Get yourself a whiteboard and practice it again and again and again. there are a number of example design scenarios out there that you can use and adapt. I would use some as a starting point but would change the answers i was expecting the panellists were giving me or changing the answer they gave me half way through to practice how I could look at what i had written down and drawn and change it due to that requirement change. Certainly practice talking about what you are doing on the board and continually ask questions to try gleam out information but make sure you have good reasons to ask those questions as sometimes the panellists who are role laying as customers might have to email someone to get the answer to your question.

VCDX’s are floating brains and I’ll never be that good

Some people think that to obtain the VCDX you have to be an unachievable rockstar who can provision via mindcontrol and whilst there are some big names from the community who are also VCDX certified what I tell people is that all these people were in the same place they are but with work and dedication they learnt and practiced and proved they had the skills and knowledge to obtain the VCDX. From yesterdays mocks a number of the guys who are looking to defend over the next few defences said what easy going and normal people the four VCDX were and whilst that’s very nice of them to say I feel it lends itself to the point that people who have passed the exam are no different than anyone else and that anyone can pass it with time and effort. I give the same advice to those defending that they have to remember that they belong in the defend room and that the panellist were at the same place they are and to think of them as their peers. 99% of VCDX are really nice humble people who are really happy for more people to join the ranks and try with what spare time they have to share the knowledge and help those looking to pass it realise that it isn’t an insurmountable mountain. But no one will carry you and what might come across at points as someone not being willing to help is that for you to learn the most and really get value out of the journey (more about my feelings about doing it for the right reason here) you need to do it yourself and by someone carrying you it won;t help you nor the program to have “paper” VCDX even though the defence should make this pretty clear.

I’m waiting for the right project to come along before I start working on my VCDX submission

I hear this one often and certainly see it quite a bit on slack channels I’m part of as well as twitter. I don’t believe a perfect project will ever come along, there are certainly projects that can cover a good portion of the bases but I know a number of VCDX including myself who supplemented existing designs they had done to fit the blueprint or to show their architect abilities and a number of VCDX who merged a few projects together as if it were one so that they could still speak to real experiences they had around the designs and not have the challenge of remembering a fictional story. There are also a number of people who passed with fictional designs but even for these they state they related back to previous project they had been on where customers asked for the portions. I recommend getting started right away especially due to the timeframes it might take you to build a design if you are doing it in your spare time.

I’ve got a wife/young kids/I travel a lot/I have a full time job/all of the above

I hear this often and I do hear where people are coming from but for me it is like anything people state they want, how badly do you want it as if you realistically want it bad enough it’s amazing what time you can find to do it. When i was preparing for my second VCDX attempt i used to watch two different YouTube videos https://youtu.be/scr2PrcDxEohttps://youtu.be/Ofo2lv9-nVY to remind myself and question myself how badly I wanted to pass it and also due to my having failed the first time and that I couldn’t bring myself to not complete what I had started. When i did my first defence i had a six month old daughter who would only sleep 3-4 hours a night, I have a wife, I had a full-time job on a challenging project and I needed to do things for myself so I didn’t go insane but i found the time to submit and for my second time I was flying to Rotterdam and was out there for three days a week on a high profile project but I made the time to study on the plane and trains back and forth each week and studied in the hotel room. I studied and worked on my design an hour before work started and after my daughter went to sleep. I’m not saying I’m anything amazing at all all I am saying is if you realistically look at your time you’ll find opportunities to do it and lie the Eric Thomas video I mentioned above you question yourself do I want it more than X and very often you’ll work out what’s really important whilst still spending time with significant others in your life, working successfully and not burning yourself out.

The more I learn for the VCDX the more I realise how little I know

Welcome to the club. As I covered above about doing it for what i believe are the right reasons the VCDX journey will expose you to so much technology and options and people who have experience in so many things you might have little to no experience in. You will learn LOADS along the path to VCDX and I will be honest with you even after passing the VCDX I realised how little I still knew and how much I still had to continually learn. The below image explains this for me perfectly

I have massive imposter syndrome around being a VCDX and I have spoken to numerous others who say the exact same thing. I’m not sure if it will ever go away and I think it’s a very common thing so if you think being a VCDX means you know everything and don’t experience the feeling of having to “fake it until you make it” then it just is not true, no one can know everything and everyone is having to continually learn new things and there will always be people who know things better than you do, it’s the profession we’ve chosen to be a part of. A great piece I saw recently about imposter syndrome from Neil Gaiman is the below:

If you are looking to do the VCDX then I would highly recommend it, certainly speak to your significant other around the work that needs to go into it as it does take dedication and depending on your progress for a submission package and your skillset can require you to spend time learning but with dedication and work it is certainly achievable.